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We know that Ken Meyer is a wingnut supreme, as he has taken the talking point currently loved by people like him who hate working people. Earlier this year, one of the nine Federal Circuit Courts ignored over a century of precedence by holding in a singular case involving a single employer/employee dispute that Obama is, in effect, barred from making appointments to the NLRB Board. No other Federal court has made a similar ruling.

Ken may be made sad by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts, a Republican appointee who has rarely seen a corporate-restraining, worker-supporting law he didn't want to strike down. He joined the majority a couple of years ago in a Supreme Court judgment which invalidated hundreds of NLRB judgments because the NLRB Board lacked a quorum. When the Solicitor General explained that the Senate Republicans had made a mockery of the traditional "advise and consent" role of the Senate by opposing ALL of Obama's choices for the NLRB Board because they don't want the NLRB to function, Roberts responded to the Government's attorney by asking, "Well, why doesn't the President use his recess appointment powers?".

So, Ken, the President must be allowed to use his recess appointment powers to overcome kneejerk, complete and irrational obstruction by the minority Senate Republican caucus, unless you believe that every single President going back to the mid-19th Century should not have been allowed to make any recess appointments. Or unless you want to disable the functions of agencies meant to uphold the law. Hey, maybe that's what you're up to,,,

It's funny how when you elect and appoint people who hate the government, we all end up with a government we hate.

If Kaiser members were persuaded by CNA/NUHW's claim that SEIU-UHW is moving forward as a Union which does the bosses' bidding, and if their readings of the plain language of their last two contracts have been full of concessions, then our Kaiser Service and Tech members would not have turned out to vote to ratify the contracts in record numbers, and they would have voted to leave SEIU. They did not. They are simply unpersuaded by NUHW's "facts".

Before I came on as a staff member of SEIU-UHW, I was a rank-and-file member at Eden Medical Center, where I worked for 25 years and organized my Clerical residual unit into the Union. The training and development I gained as a trade Unionist under the Rosselli-led Local was tremendous. The people leading NUHW are skilled organizers and they wish to help workers. I have zero doubt about that.

Unfortunately, they have lost their perspective and vision. Organizing the organized will not move the labor movement forward. The vast majority of health care workers at hospitals and convalescents in California have no Union. Those caregivers need organizing help to increase their compensation and advocate for better patient care quality and safer working conditions. For these workers, CNA-NUHW has very few answers.

The vast, vast majority of NUHW's organizing has been in attempts to raid SEIU health care worker bargaining units in California. They have attempted to take members from multiple SEIU public sector Unions in addition to their lengthy battles with caregivers represented by UHW. These fights have borne little fruit, and NUHW has not achieved higher standards in the contracts they have managed to settle. And, of course, they have been in negotiations with Kaiser for many years and have been unable to negotiate a contract for any of their bargaining units.

I'm glad that the current SEIU International leadership has steered away from the strategies at the end of Andy Stern's leadership, most notably ending the attempt to organize Unite HERE members and keeping UHW Homecare workers in their Union. The current elected SEIU-UHW President, Dave Regan, was among the International Executive Board members who organized against Anna Berger, Stern's preferred successor, and helped elect Mary Kay Henry as the current SEIU International President.

I think of the leaders who came up with a brilliant set of strategies to win our Sutter Health fights, facility by facility, in 2005 and 2006. I have been sorely disappointed by the direction they have taken their supporters since that time.

"SEIU did what amounts to a hostile takeover when it put the local in trusteeship, and the leaders who were erroneously charged with malfeasance and thrown out formed NUHW."

Erroneously charged with malfeasance? Then why was there a civil judgement of $1.5 million for SEIU against NUHW and more than a dozen NUHW leaders which has been sustained on appeal?

"NUHW is the Kaiser workers old union, reconstituted after a hostile takeover,...".

I thought NUHW claimed that members are the Union, not the staff representatives. Were SEIU-UHW members, Kaiser and non-Kaiser, responsible for building the best contract for health care workers, or was it all Sal and Pals? If it was all Sal and his team, then how does that meet with the claim that it's all about the members?

"...the trustees, who are now the leadership under SEIU,...".

The leadership elected by the members, you mean? The leadership elected with a much higher voter turnout than was ever managed for a leadership election in the Rosselli Era? The leadership with an Executive Board made up of 300 members and NO staff, unlike the E-Board under Rosselli which was a fraction of the size and was dominated by powerful staff members? That leadership?

"SEIU, who will make contract concessions to Kaiser at the expense of its own members....".

Yes, the prediction of "contract concessions" that NUHW leaders have made since 2009, two contract negotiations ago, negotiations led by the largest Kaiser SEIU-UHW member bargaining team ever (much, much larger than the Rosselli-era bargaining teams), which maintained contracts with industry-leading wage, benefit and job security standards and were ratified by supreme majorities with higher voter turnout than ever before.

First, Kaiser SEIU-UHW members disagree that they have suffered great concessions in their last two contracts; their enthusiastic ratification votes prove it.

Second, and I mean this seriously, what would be the motivation of the current SEIU-UHW leaders to create "secret concessions" now and in the future? Explain to us why you think they would do that, and, if they were planning on doing so, why they participated in the creation of new SEIU-UHW bylaws which established a much larger membership presence among top leaders? If they wanted to give away the store, why would they set themselves up to be watched so closely?

This long, long struggle is a reminder of the importance of labor laws and the good-faith enforcement of those laws. If the NLRB had not found on behalf of these workers, it would have been even more difficult for them to win this contract. In this case, it took an employer particularly brazen in their willingness to break the law and a brave, skilled and extremely determined group of workers and their Union for the workers to prevail before the labor judge.

Unfortunately, many other employers break the law more cleverly, or succeed in confusing or intimidating their workforce. If more lawbreaking employers were caught, and their punishments more severe than just the price of doing illegal business, there would be more justice and a better balance of power at American workplaces.